Intrinsic Motivation and the Acquisition and Maintenance of Four Experiential States

Abstract

Research on the antecedents of intrinsic motivation has shown competence, self-determination, excitement, and affiliativeness to be key determinants. The present study tested Reeve and Cole's (1987a) analysis of how these experiential states affect intrinsic motivation. They were hypothesized to function as both maintaining stimuli and intrinsic rewards to increase self-report and behavioral measures of intrinsic motivation. Using the method of subjective graphing, 59 female and 50 male American college students reported maintaining or not maintaining, acquiring or not acquiring, or being ambivalent on each experiential state during a bowling session. Multivariate analyses of variance revealed that maintainers of each experiential state had higher levels of intrinsic motivation than nonmaintainers, substantiating that experiential states function as maintaining stimuli to sustain intrinsic motivation. Acquirers of self-determination and excitement (but not of competence or affiliativeness) had higher levels of intrinsic motivation than nonacquirers, substantiating that two experiential states function as intrinsic rewards to augment intrinsic motivation. That experiential states function as maintaining stimuli suggests that when individuals lose their appraisals of competence or self-determination or when they no longer feel excited or affiliative, the cognitive and affective systems initiate “stop rules” that terminate previously active intrinsic motivation processes. The finding that the experiential states function more readily as maintaining stimuli than as intrinsic rewards suggests that intrinsic motivation is more easily turned off than it is turned on.